~ Hi there! On HGTV's Hit Reality TV Show DESIGN STAR, I sewed, painted & sawed my way through some pretty tough challenges, but design doesn't have to be hard! I believe in combining simple, timeless design ingredients to create what I call "Design Recipes". I hope you find this to be a truly awesome resource. www.design-recipes.com contains design tips, articles, podcasts, how-to videos and of course design recipes galore! I invented Design Recipes simply because I love sharing my ideas! For years I collected design magazines, tagged and clipped pages with inspirational images & did nothing! That's because I didn't have the resource information so I could purchase the beautiful furniture I was seeing on the pages of the magazines! With Design Recipes, I SHARE how the room was executed, giving you the basic design tools needed for you to recreate the same look on your own and best of all I give you all of the resource information! Enjoy!

Wednesday brings us to another week and I’m so excited to reveal one of my personal home stagings! I think the living room is one of the best places to remodel or redesign if you are limiting yourself to certain areas. One reason is because it is typically the most visible area, so it makes the most sense to invest money (if needed) here.

This living room breathes effortlessly because of how open it is and how clean the lines are. Keeping furniture neutral or one color makes a huge difference. This white sofa is in the middle of the room but your eyes are drawn to the small yet colorful pieces surrounding it. This keeps the feel simple yet smooth. If it were a brightly colored or patterned piece, your eyes would be drawn to so many different parts of the room. Very distracting.

As we can see, there are really only two colors used. The light green and the deep red. As we all know, red and green are complementary colors so they work well in this room together. By having two colors, you can pull in accent pieces that reflect one or both of the colors. The pillows on the two side chairs pull in the red from the vase and couch pillows nicely.

Once you have your staple pieces set in neutral tones (the couch and side chairs) it is easy to restyle or redesign your room or space. You can swap out accent pillows and décor effortlessly to match your mood or desired look!

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